


And The Songbirds Keep Singing

by robotsfighting



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, OC (Santana's grandfather)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:30:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsfighting/pseuds/robotsfighting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks on the curb like it’s a balance beam, one flip-flopped foot swinging carefully in front of the other, her arms out to balance her, fingers splayed. She doesn’t care if she looks ridiculous, because it feels good. It feels young, like when things were always at least mostly okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Songbirds Keep Singing

It’s hot. It’s _stupid_ hot, the kind of hot where you can cook breakfast on the asphalt in the middle of the road, where the sun feels like it’s sitting between your shoulders, like you’re giving it a ride somewhere. The neighborhood is heat-stroke silent, even the little kids all curled up inside their houses with their X-Box’s instead of screaming and running through sprinklers on front lawns or riding bikes in the street. It’s a mid-August thing, and Santana sort of remembers it; how she used to sit around inside during the last few weeks of summer vacation and flip through cartoon channels on the TV instead of doing anything that involved, like, moving, because she knew it was her last chance to be totally relaxed before school started again, and she was going to soak it up for as long as possible.

She walks on the curb like it’s a balance beam, one flip-flopped foot swinging carefully in front of the other, her arms out to balance her, fingers splayed. She doesn’t care if she looks ridiculous, because it feels good. It feels young, like when things were always at least mostly okay. Her left foot brushes the overgrown, dry strip of grass between the curb and the sidewalk with every wide step forward. It reminds her of walking home from middle school every day, balancing most of the way with Brittany right in front of her, laughing, doing it backwards, hopping between the sidewalk and the curb.

She loses her balance, and her right foot slips down to the road.

She looks down at it, and that familiar feeling of frustrated anger crashing into terrified unhappiness happens somewhere behind her solar plexus. She closes her eyes and clenches her hands into fists, fingernails digging into her palms. She steps back onto the sidewalk and keeps going.

So everything is heavy and awful now. It has been for a while. Since a few months before school ended last year, since _Landslide_ and feelings and Brittany saying _if it weren’t for_. And Santana isn’t even really mad at Brittany anymore. Because Brittany is single now, she’s just sitting at her house probably _right this second_ watching a _Project Runway_ marathon and Santana could be over there totally macking on that right now, but instead she’s walking straight-center down the sidewalk in the stupid heat in Lima Heights Adjacent because she’s too afraid to be anything but a total asshole liar.

That’s what it feels like to her, anyway, like she’s lying about something, all the time. It’s like something Kurt’s hobbit prep school hotty would say. She isn’t “being true to herself,” she isn’t “being honest about her emotions.” And it isn’t even _lying_ , it’s just kind of being quiet about the truth. She only lied that one time. Well, those couple of times, about Dave. _Something called loved_ and _I’d say that was accurate_ and everything. (Santana can still feel the way her stomach lurched when she saw Brittany’s face after she said that to Jacob Ben Jewfro. Like Santana saying those words was actually hurting her physically somewhere, and she just looked – really disappointed, the way Santana’s dad looked sometimes when she did something really stupid, the way that made her feel worse than when he yelled at her.)

So she’s spent a lot of time this summer lying in her bed and looking up at her ceiling and feeling bad about herself. Dave disappeared after the last day of school; summer is apparently a beardless season, and Santana is sort of disgusted by the way it annoys her that he just dropped her like that. Because he’s kind of a Neanderthal and a douche bag about a lot of things, and he’s kind of weak and stupid sometimes, but she’d started to actually maybe _like_ him a little. Like, enjoy his company, in a way that was totally outside of hanging his gayness over his head and torturing him with it. He isn’t actually as horrible as she thought he was. He’s just really repressed, and really scared.

She hopes that wherever he disappeared to, he’s getting as much ass as he can. Maybe then he’ll stop being such a fucking spazz.

She knows he isn’t. The same way she isn’t. They’re scared of the same thing. They never talked about it, but she knows, just from looking at him, from sitting next to him on the school steps after prom and not saying anything. She knows that he can feel it, too.

It’s going to come out, one day. _She’s_ going to come out. There’ll be a time in the future when she can’t hide it anymore, and she’s going to have to look people in the face and tell them that she’s capital- _g_ -gay. It isn’t that it’s scary, it’s that it’s fucking _looming_. It’s just hanging out there some time in the future, waiting to drop on her and fuck everything up, and she can’t _do_ anything about it. She can’t change what she is. She could try, but being a closet case her whole life isn’t her, and she knows it. She needs to be able to do what she wants, act the way she wants, fuck and love who she wants.

She’s going to break out of this town one day, and she’s going to run until she forgets what it’s called.

But it might happen _before_ that. It might happen while she’s still here, in high school, and she can’t even let herself think about it, because it makes something hard and sharp block her throat so she can barely breathe. She’s so terrified of that moment when everyone’s eyes will start to follow her down the hallway, when they’ll start whispering behind her back. The way they do for Kurt. That total change in how people see her, just because of how she gets off – just because of what makes her happy.

Brittany makes her happy. Brittany fills the holes that Santana has managed to gouge in herself, or that other people have gouged in her. Brittany curls around her and is like _oxygen_ , so fucking necessary to keep breathing, and it’s completely separate from the fact that Brittany is legitimately beautiful. She’s beautiful on the _inside_ , and Santana can’t even bring herself to temper that with anything sarcastic. She just is. It’s like she’s scrubbed clean internally, like her soul is totally untouched and unmarred by everything that sucks about the world, and loving her makes Santana feel better about – everything.

Loving her is what’s going to make everyone stare and whisper.

Santana doesn’t live in Lima Heights Adjacent anymore. They moved when she was twelve, and her dad got his medical license, and then suddenly there was all this money around, but she still feels like she belongs here. It’s in her blood; that was what her uncles said, the first time she’d laid someone out in eighth grade. You can take the girl out of – whatever. She’s never been afraid to come here. Most of her family still lives in these narrow old houses with green-yellow lawns and crappy little gardens. She grew up here, screaming down the streets with the rest of the neighborhood kids, getting yelled at by other people’s parents. Being here makes her feel better sometimes. Nostalgia. And her grandfather.

He lives in an ashy blue house two streets over, and he’s the only person in the world who understands her completely, other than Brittany. He’s the one who gave her music. He’s the one she used to run to, when she was hurt or scared of something, when her dad was at school and her mom was working and some other kid pushed her off of her bike and sent her sprawling on the asphalt. She used to curl up with him in his broken recliner while the rest of the family laughed and shouted in the kitchen of his house during holidays, both of them worn out from all of the _being together_ required in their huge family with too many aunts and uncles and cousins. Thinking about that makes her feel calmer. Wrapped up in her grandfather’s thin arms, his mouth tucked against her ear, singing something soft and happy until she fell asleep. It was safe.

She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, looking down at the crack between two sections.

He’s two streets over, and she hasn’t seen him since Easter.

She moves before she gives herself time to think about it, just steps off of the sidewalk and into a random lawn, hurrying around the side of the house and into the back yard. She’d only meant to walk around, clear her head, feel something that wasn’t the same pattern of afraid-angry-afraid-miserable she’d been keeping up all summer. This is better. (She vaults a shared fence.) This is something she can actually _do_ , instead of wandering around. She can see her grandfather. (Someone else’s back yard, front yard, the next street.) He’ll make her feel better just by _existing_. Or he won’t, but it’ll be better than nothing, than walking around her dead old neighborhood for four hours before walking back home.

Another front yard, another back yard, another fence, and then she can see it, throwing her hands up to vault over the last section of fence. The old house, with the ancient, boxy green car in the driveway, sitting between two sort of crappier houses. It’s this weird relief, walking over the cracked asphalt towards it, like she’d been sure somewhere that it wouldn’t be there anymore.

Santana picks her way over the front yard, littered with kids’ toys that her little cousins had probably left the last time they were visiting. She steps over a plastic truck and a naked Barbie and onto path to the front door, straightening her clothes and her hair and taking a breath before climbing the two crumbling cement steps to the porch. The front door is open, just the screen door keeping the bugs out, and Santana bangs on it with the palm of her hand, listening to the familiar clatter of the thick plastic against the doorframe.

He appears at the end of the hallway, all willowy and old, drying his hands off with a dish cloth. The screen door pixelates him, and the hall is dark, but it’s still obviously him; thinning white hair combed back, a teasing kind of smile stretching over his face when he sees her. He throws the towel over his shoulder and meanders down towards the door, his hands shoved into his pockets, making him look like someone in those stupid cowboy movies Puck and Finn watched all the time when they were in middle school. He leans against the doorframe when he reaches it, looking her up and down. “And why should I let you in?”

God, she really missed him. She smirks, crossing her arms over her chest. “What, am I interrupting your telenovelas?”

He reaches out for the wooden door, starting to push it closed. “Well, this’s been a nice visit, you should go and bother another old man now--”

Santana laughs, pulling the screen door open and pushing the wooden door wider to throw her arms around her grandfather’s chest and squeeze. (He was always way too thin, even when she was really little and she was scared for a while that he was a skeleton, and he’s always been taller than her.) She presses her face against the flannel of his shirt. “ _Hola, abuelo._ ”

He leans down to wrap his arms around her, patting her back lightly. “ _Hola, niña._ Any particular reason for coming?”

“I missed you,” she mumbles against him. “And if you tell my mother I said that, I’ll tell her you’re senile and making shit up.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” he says dryly. He pulls away from her, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “You’re warm. Did you walk here?”

Santana shrugs. “Burns calories.” Which isn’t at all the actual reason why she walked from her parents’ house instead of driving like a normal person, but he doesn’t need to know that, and Santana shoves it away.

“Good, then I can stuff you full of food.” He sweeps around behind her and herds her down the hallway, through the living room with the massive record collection and into the kitchen, where he drops her into one of the chairs at the old 50’s-style breakfast table next to the sliding glass door. “I made dough and filling for empanadas earlier. I’d much rather make them for you than for your idiot cousins.”

Santana grins, folding her arms on the blue Formica tabletop and leaning on them, watching her grandfather turn to open the fridge to pull out a ball of dough wrapped in plastic. “Need any help?”

He glances over his shoulder, reaching for a pan. “I’ve learned from my mistakes,” he says warily, giving her a look before putting the pan on the stove and reaching into a cabinet for the vegetable oil. “I think the further away we keep you from hot metal and oil, the better things will be for all of us.”

Santana rolls her eyes, resting her chin on her palm. Her grandfather gathers more things from the drawers and the fridge: a rolling pin, a bowl of something. He’s always done this; cooking, all of the house stuff. Santana’s grandmother used to say that it was the reason she married him, but that was a pretty obvious lie, because they were ridiculous about each other. She died when Santana was thirteen, but nothing about her grandfather had really changed. He just gets quiet, sometimes, looking at the pictures in the front hallway.

“So how’s life?” he asks. He’s rolling out the dough, shoulders bowing and his arms bending over and over again. “Your cheerleading thing, the singing club?”

Santana sighs. “Coach Sylvester called me yesterday and said that if I haven’t been deported for trying to smuggle heroin across the border in my boobs by the time school starts, I can have my spot on the Cheerios back.”

Her grandfather glances at her. “I don’t like this woman. What about the singing?”

No one else in Santana’s family knows that she’s in glee club. It’s embarrassing, and kind of incredibly lame, but when she needed to come and go through his record collection more than once, he asked, and she just told him. He laughed at how she said it, like it was this huge shameful secret. He said he was glad, because she had a beautiful voice. And that made her feel really good, honestly. When she got _Valerie_ , she flew into his house without knocking to tell him about it.

“Glee’s still on,” she says. “Everyone wants to hang out all the time, so they’re driving me crazy, but--” She shrugs. “And I think this hobbit who’s dating a boy in the club is going to transfer and they’re going to be sickeningly adorable all year.”

“I’m sure you’ll learn to like her,” her grandfather says, tipping two doughy empanadas into the pan of oil.

Santana is quiet, swallowing suddenly against whatever has lodged itself in her throat. _Her, I’m sure you’ll learn to like **her**_. Hummel’s tree-dwelling marsupial boyfriend is, despite the eyelashes, very male. And suddenly all Santana wants to do is test this. She wants to say, _Actually, Kurt’s gayer than a rainbow party hat_ , but at the same time she really, really doesn’t, because she’s terrified of what he’ll say or think or whatever.

“Where’s Brittany?” he asks, like a goddamn mindreader. “I thought you two were surgically attached.”

“She’s busy,” Santana manages quietly through the blockage in her throat. “Boyfriend, or something.”

Her grandfather turns, smiling, with two empanadas on a plate. He sets them on the table in front of her and sits across from her, gesturing for her to eat. “What about you?” he asks. “Breaking any hearts?”

Yeah. Just, mostly her own. Santana is frozen, looking down at the food in front of her, still stuck on the first question, thinking about Brittany, about being here with Brittany, the two of them, all the time. Her grandfather taught them both how to dance in the living room. He taught them to salsa and tango and all of the dumb dances he learned when he was young. Brittany loved it. They used to come here every day, and watch Spanish television while her grandfather cooked or gardened or sat in the armchair, watching too. She’d whisper running commentary on what was happening into Brittany’s ear, and sometimes she would make stuff up, just to make Brittany laugh, and Jesus Christ, she misses Brittany so bad it feels like somebody is pulling her heart out of her chest.

When she glances up, her grandfather is looking at her with concern, and she realizes that she hasn’t said anything. She’s just sitting there, staring at her untouched empanadas, feeling like she’s about to start crying.

“ _Niña_?” he asks softly. “Are you all right?”

And this would be the perfect time to come out. This is her grandfather. He used to carry her to bed when she fell asleep in the back yard. He used to braid her hair while she talked to him about the things that happened that day in elementary school. He’s supposed to love her forever, no matter what, and there’s this desperate part inside of Santana telling her to just _say it_ , because it could make things better. But it could also ruin everything, screw everything up completely, and she can’t lose him. She needs him to be hers so much. She can’t risk that, not for anything. So she doesn’t do it. She pushes the plate away, folds her arms on the table and puts her head down, holding herself in, squeezing her eyes closed and swallowing roughly.

There’s a few beats, and then she feels her grandfather’s gnarled old fingers running through her hair. “Are you in trouble?” he asks her softly, leaning across the table towards her. She shakes her head. “You’re not pregnant?” Shake. “Sick?” Shake. “With someone who’s bad to you?” Shake. He lets out a breath. “Good.”

He sounds so relieved, and it pushes more guilt into her chest. _Suck it up,_ she tells herself silently. _Suck it the fuck up, Santana._ She sits up, pressing her fingers under her eyes, keeping it in.

Her grandfather watches her, his face thoughtful. His arms are crossed on the cool table, his shoulders hunched, his head tilted, considering her. “You look afraid, _niña_. I’ve never seen you afraid of anything.”

Santana shakes her head, waving a hand. “I’m fine,” she says, with a weird tremor in her voice. “Hormones. Teenager stuff.” She sniffs. “I’m fine.”

Her grandfather is silent again, still looking at her. After a moment, he says very softly, “You know that I love you, no matter what.” He ducks his head, meeting her eyes. His are so blue, she notices faintly – bright, clear blue. “I could never stop.”

She _chokes_. It’s like everything she has ever felt for the past year is rushing back into her, filling her up until she feels like she’s going to burst out of her skin, just explode from the pressure of all of that fear and desperation and love and stupidity expanding inside of her, and all she wants to say is _I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay, can you still love me now?_ but she can’t make the words come. Something keeps them trapped in her head. She puts her head back down and wills herself not to cry. “I know,” she says, cracked and wet, and God, she almost, _almost_ means it.

She hears her grandfather stand, his chair scraping against the linoleum, and a moment later she feels his arms wrap around her shoulders. She turns in her chair, pressing her face against his thin, hollow chest and clutching at his shirt with both of her hands. She’s crying, and she doesn’t really know when she started, but her breath hitches and she can’t talk and she feels _ridiculous_ , but her grandfather just holds on tighter.

With his breath warm against her ear, he starts to sing softly, like he did when she was little.

She clutches back harder, and waits. She waits to feel better again.


End file.
